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and Chip Board regulars to take on. I'd like those who read this to kick the idea around and add or subtract from what I lay out here and see where it goes.
This is by no means "my project" and I'm definitely NOT the one to take it and run with it. If the idea is worth pursuing, the development and management of it will work itself out. I'm just putting the idea out there for discussion. It may be something that could be organized and operated under the umbrella of the Museum of Gaming History.
I call the idea the Open Archive Project, and the goal is to create an all-encompassing guide to the history, chips and memorabilia of each historically important casino, one casino at a time. The goal is not a price guide, but just a guide to what is known to exist.
The end result would be a series of guides that anyone could have access to that would provide a wealth of information about an individual casino, its history and items associated with it.
The project would begin with the selection of the first casino to be covered by a guide. I would think we would want to start with the major casinos in the history of early Las Vegas, such as Flamingo, Dunes, Stardust, Golden Nugget, etc.
For the sake of illustration, say we decided that the first guide would cover The Flamingo in Las Vegas. Those participating would concentrate as a group on compiling the contents of the guide for The Flamingo, including but not limited to:
- High quality scans of each and every chip, token and strike from The Flamingo known to exist.
- High quality scans or photographs of each and every slotcard, room key, ashtray, swizzle stick, postcard, dice, matchcover, keno card, advertisements and anything else with The Flamingo's name on it or associated with The Flamingo's history.
- Photographs of the casino at various stages of its existence, including artist's conception, construction photos, renovation, rebuilding, and finally demolition.
- A written history of the casino, its builders, owners, operators, anecdotes, etc.
As the information is gathered, it could be organized in a uniform way that would be used with all such guides we produce, and then into a guide that would be made into a PDF file, much the same way Ed Hertel's Illegals guide is. The user could use the guide in digital form or print a hard copy on their own printer.
Once completed, each of these guides would be stored in a central online location, such as the website so that anyone could access them. A copy could also be stored at archive.org which is an online library which anyone can access. For those who are downloading-challenged, the could sell copies of the guides on CD-ROM in the MOGH gift shop and by mail through the club magazine or the MOGH website.
My thinking is that one casino at a time should be worked on, with all of those interested concentrating their efforts into making the guide for that casino as complete as possible before calling it "done" and moving on to the next one.
Of course each guide should be open to future revisions and additions as more information becomes available, so there should be some central location to contribute information that would be included in the next revision.
The members of the collectively have more knowledge and access to the history of the casinos of Nevada than any other resource there is. As a group, we could obtain a scan of any chip or other piece of casino memorabilia in existence through our contacts and our own collections. The articles the members of the have already researched and written for the club magazine or posted online have historical information that can give each casino guide a foundation to build on.
What do you think? Does the idea have merit?
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